Louise Erdrich’s “Disaster Stamps of Pluto” provides a great example of the suggestions for setting or place developed in Dorothy Allison’s “Place.” The reader has a clear sense of the town immediately, both in its details, like city and state, population, and weather, as well as in its mood and probable future. In addition, by the end of the fourth paragraph, the reader has an understanding of the speaker’s place in this dying, lonely town as the “president of Pluto’s historical society.” Unrelated to place, the development of the speaker’s character is the thing I enjoyed most about “Disaster Stamps of Pluto.” For most of the story I felt a slight frustration at not knowing much about the speaker’s identity, other than that she is a woman in her 80s. I never suspected that the surviving child of the murdered family, who grew up to be Pluto’s first female doctor, could be the speaker until the speaker mentioned her medical practice. The final “twist,” revealing that this entire story is part of the historical newsletter, took me completely off guard, but only added to the quiet drama and heartbreak to be found even in a tiny, dying town.
I enjoyed Allison’s point about reading as an attempt to learn about those whose settings and experiences are different from ours. I agree, and this explains a frustration I’ve felt before, especially this weekend at the Writer’s Conference, whose theme was “The Inspired South.” Most everyone at the conference was either raised in the South or consider themselves Southern. Thus, a conference of Southerners talking in their writing about the South doesn’t provide any sense of exploration, of covering new or uncharted territory creatively. If this conference’s theme was explored in California or Boston, I think it would have been more impactful and could have exposed a new audience to talented writers from the South, because the people of these locations don’t have the context we do. Choosing a theme or topic with which almost everyone had a lifetime of experience felt too “safe” to me. On the other hand, I do understand the need to preserve a sense of regional identity and discover what this identity means in a modern context. I enjoyed the conference, but I’m still conflicted about how I feel about it’s focus.
One of Allison's points, though, is basically the old adage that writing should make the familiar strange. Our versions of the South are all quite different and a good Southern writer should have the kind of close observation skills that expose the parts of the South that no one else sees. My only problem with the convention's theme is that "Southern Writing" sometimes has a generic quality that creates, for others, a South that doesn't exist, one that was best described by a friend of mine who told me the movie O Brother Where Art Thou was "a little too huck huck." I didn't necessarily find this all over the conference, but I was disappointed when huck huck came to call.
ReplyDeleteAt any rate, the conference themes have to be marketable--and this one certainly was.